Annee
and Jini
and Lynnette
and Jane
each of you raised me
in your own way
and i still ache for you
every
single
day
childhood trauma
August 20, 2025
as fall approaches
but isn’t quite here
not yet
not yet
the memories of late summers past
invades my mind
sans consent
[do flashbacks ever ask?]
and no matter how stable
and lovely
and mine
my life is today
i keep seeing
loss
upon loss
upon lost trust
upon that feeling of any control in life
fleeting though it may have been
stolen in an instant
and this current administration
certainly doesn’t help this
weird ptsd i’ve found myself in
everything seems to be
culminating in something
and i continue to avoid all emotions and memories
until absolutely
necessary
August 3, 2025
everything in my life
seems to be
on delayed reaction time —
processing traumatic events/
pain responses to any injury/
excitement and anxiety responses/
processing temperature changes in my body/
even my damn tarot cards seem
a little too far away from the reading
to the event they foretold
to be anything less than
delayed
[but, i suppose, that’s just how my body/soul
plays this little life game]
January 22, 2025
i’d love to be a
“yes and”
find the funnest stream
go with the flow
and see whatever happens
happening
kind of person
but raising myself from the time i was
approximately 11
gave me some sort of
perfectionistic
type-a-personality
care and careful
self-preservation
overly cautious
kind of vibe constantly fighting against my
natural chaotic state
and hey
maybe it’s the opposite
maybe my natural state is more type-a
and the immediacy of seeing how
life is fleeting
gave me the drive to try to
induce chaos and joy in my life
but whichever way the truth lies
the sentiment still stands:
i have one part of me in chaos
and one part of me trying for strict alignment
and the two parts are forever fighting
inside my mind/my heart/my body/my soul
and rather than tempering each to a
reasonable level, they simply
stop
all action in either direction
and so i am neither cautious nor chaotic
i am simply
stuck.
January 5, 2025
“meanwhile
back on the farm…”
why do singular lessons stand out to me
when whole years disappear
in my sieve of a memory?
i can barely remember the good times
and only moments of the bad
and probably just what i made monologues of memories
is what still comes back to me
even after i’ve long since let go of that story in my repertoire
[what would it be like to have the memory
i was born with, instead of the memory
i was traumatized to have?]
September 12, 2024
was i a kid
who got lost in the cracks
or did i fall through a very deep
very obvious
hole
in my [parents’] social sphere?
and is that why it’s so hard to count on community now?
March 29, 2024
i can stare at pictures of me
and think
“what a baby”
while distincly remembering how adult i felt
at the time
now, i don’t know what i look like from the outside,
but inwardly,
i’m younger
than a baby —
a fetus maybe,
or not even yet imagined,
because i know so much less now
than i did
as a teen who grew up too fast.
March 7, 2023
when words are your art form
and you have trauma that takes away
the memory centers for language retention
what does that mean for
everything?
October 24, 2022
i wonder
if my mother
would have been great
at getting my pronouns
right
would she have stood up for me
at family gatherings
corrected people
when i wasn’t near
would she have been
the ally
i needed
to come out
with a bang
instead of this subtle
exhausting
whispered
coming out
over
and over
and over
again
every time
a ‘she’ is uttered
or a ‘ladies’ is announced
or any of those microaggressions
my gender dysphoria
insists
are actual aggression
i don’t know
i wish i knew
but i really don’t
she was an ally of all queer folks she knew
(I know 100% she’d have been to my wedding
would have celebrated like the world was ending
when she knew mine was just beginning
because that’s just the way she was)
but gender is somehow harder
and the in-between confuses even the best
of allies
and i don’t want to put her up on a pedestal
nor do i want to underestimate her devotion
to a me she never got to see
i only knew her for eleven and three quarters years
and i have memories of less
she is both the person i was closest to
and the biggest mystery of my life
and i just wish
i could guess
what it would be like
to have her
stand up
for me
August 27, 2022
a memory
failing me
at every opportunity
or
is it protecting me?
is it saving me from the agony
of solid knowledge
and pain?
because
isn’t that what a trauma response is?
just the brain and/or body
trying their hardest
to save the heart
from hurt?
kipventures 